Gunkerty Jeb writes: Initially thought to be merely a module of the now-infamous Flame malware, MiniFlame, or SPE is, in reality, a secondary surveillance tool deployed against specially identified targets following an initial Flame or Gauss compromise.

MiniFlame/SPE was one of three previously unseen pieces of malware discovered during a forensic analysis of Flame's command and control servers.'

Researchers at Kaspersky Lab and CERT-Bund/BSI determined that the program, which has compromised somewhere between 10 and 20 machines, can stand alone as an independent piece of malware or run as a plug-in for both Flame and Gauss.